The use of ontologies in the spatial planning domain

Abstract

Spatial planning in Poland, as in other European countries, is done at three basic levels: national, regional and local. At the local level, the local spatial development plan is prepared, which is the principal instrument for forming the spatial policy of each municipality. The local plan constitutes an act of law, which consists of the text of the plan and an integrally connected drawing, which presents specific regulations and restrictions of the physical area. Planning data, in addition to cadastral data, are among the most important information that every citizen should have access to and which should be understandable and legible. Currently, there is much freedom in the methods of preparing local plans and their presentation. Despite there being a regulation which defines the symbols used in these documents, the drawings of plans have often additional markings. In addition, the definitions of terms used in the plans are not uniform (each of the designers have their own terms) and the way of expressing their regulations in the plans is different. Consequently, the problem is not only on incorrect interpretation of the plans, but also their wider use and integration with other data. In the project described in the paper, the authors attempt to use semantic web technologies to build the structures of formal and practical tools to support planning processes. The basic element of any formalization process is to develop a professional vocabulary, the use of which would be mandatory and which would unify and standardize concepts and the whole structure of the plans. The authors' aim was also to describe the regulations of the local spatial development plan in the OWL language, which has semantics based on description logic.